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Washington: A new spacecraft belonging to the “SpaceX” company took off Wednesday, carrying a mission from the US space agency (NASA) to the International Space Station, after another vehicle belonging to Elon Musk’s company, which included businessmen, landed at sea off the shores of Florida.
The mission, dubbed “Crow-4”, took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 03:52 local time (07:52 GMT) and includes Americans such as Jill Lindgren, Bob Haynes and Jessica Watkins, in addition to Italian Samanta Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency.
The facts of the launch were broadcast live on the NASA website.
This takeoff came less than 40 hours after the return of another crew, which is an acceleration of the pace of flights in the context of “SpaceX” assuming the role of carrier for NASA missions to the International Space Station.
Between the interruption of the American space shuttle in 2011 and 2020, the Americans relied on the Russian “Soyuz” spacecraft.
The four astronauts who make up the “Cro-4” mission will join another crew whose return to Earth is close after he stayed at the station for five months. The date of the return of this team will be determined soon.
There are also three Russian cosmonauts on the station.
The new crew conducts and monitors hundreds of scientific experiments under zero gravity, including what is on plants, or on the project of an artificial retina for the human eye.
Jessica Watkins will be the fifth black woman to go into space and the first to join the International Space Station on a long mission.
She and her three colleagues are expected to arrive at the International Space Station about 17 hours after liftoff, and docking will take place at 00:15 GMT Thursday.